It’s AI breeding season for our heifers.
The boys have been working… and I stopped in to help.
We always get the question of “why would you Artificially Inseminate when you could just let a bull cover the girls instead?” Well, the heifers will be put out with a bull to catch the ones that didn’t successfully breed with the AI… but bulls are expensive. Bull prices sometimes boggle the mind… $6-12,000 for good bulls… with expensive ones going for $20-40,000. You hope one bull might cover 30 cows. With AI, you could, in theory, have the same bull breed all of your heifers, making a bigger impact on your herd than if you actually had him on site.
Bulls also can break parts of their anatomy that turn them into just expensive hamburger. Bulls take off looking at the neighbor’s cows instead of his own harem. Bulls fight and tear up fences and hide in the cool shade instead of wooing some pretty young thing. If you can’t afford the bull you want… to bring in whatever genetics you’d like to add to your herd… AI is simply the way to go.
Most of our heifers are being bred to “Capitalist” this year.
Gotta love the name!
We have a new addition to our set up this year. It’s called a palpation cage. It gives you quick and safe access to the area behind the chute. It’s the solid wall area on the right. The guys are liking it and believe it’s definitely speeded up the process.
My Dad would never keep a bull around, because he said they were too dangerous. He loved the options for good breeding through AI anyway, and our dairy herd wasn’t big.
makes sense to me. bulls can be a “pain” in more than one way!